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 Posted: Wed, 5th Jan 2011 17:51 Post subject: ATI can't write drivers - can someone elaborate? |
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It is usually taken for granted that ATI drivers suck and nVidia drivers rule.
The nVidia driver on my Notebook crashes all the time. Every one in a while my screen turns black and a few seconds later the desktop returns and Windows informs me that the nVidia driver crashed and was restarted. If it happens while a game is running/CUDA is used Windows crashes completely.
My desktop is running with an AMD card and the driver is rock-solid so far (three months). I once had a glitch where Aero was turned off automatically (seemed like a GPU timeout and Windows prepared for the worst) but that's it - no real crash.
Where does this common knowledge come from? It is usually brought up in every GPU discussion ("AMD might be cheaper but the drivers suck ass") but I don't understand it.
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| Posted: Wed, 5th Jan 2011 18:01 Post subject: |
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Well a part of it comes definitely from the times when AMD didn't give a shit about linux drivers... I am not sure if the situation is still like that though...
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| Posted: Wed, 5th Jan 2011 18:04 Post subject: |
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The only problem I had with ati drivers was on old 9550 and that's because the drivers were too new so an old game didn't start 
But on my new comp I had absolutely no problems whatsoever. In games or in photoshop or any other graphic vise application...
"Quantum mechanics is actually, contrary to it's reputation, unbeliveably simple, once you take the physics out."
Scott Aaronson | chiv wrote: | | thats true you know. newton didnt discover gravity. the apple told him about it, and then he killed it. the core was never found. |
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JBeckman
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Location: Sweden
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| Posted: Wed, 5th Jan 2011 18:24 Post subject: |
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SLI and Crossfire are both problematic but more so Crossfire, current drivers also don't fully support the more recent 6900 series (6800 is supported however.) outside of a beta release as far as I'm aware (Which uses a newer build date but content wise the 2D and 3D drivers and CCC is older and it's using CCC1 instead of CCC2.)
Unsure about OpenCL and similar support, 10.12 now supports ATI Stream 2.3 with various enhancements though as usual since older hardware relies on DirectX 10 or 10.1 Direct Compute 4 and 4.1 instead of DX11/Direct Compute 5 ATI 4000 series to 2000 series are only supported as "beta"
Power saving and similar ties in a bit to Crossfire though some users have had issues with sleep mode setting a GPU reset error.
(EDIT: Earlier 5000 series drivers had issues with this but was resolved eventually.)
Interface wise ATI uses .Net (Still 2.x?) and NVIDIA VC++ so NVIDIA's solution is a bit less clunky and they also expose more options outside of third party utilities, third party utilities are still needed for more advanced work however.
Support wise AMD/ATI is smaller so titles take some time (Very important for Crossfire performance.), especially titles favored by NVIDIA, reverse is also true though in those few cases like ATI's earlier stunt with DX11 support in AvP and Dirt 2 for example.
Hardware wise I have no idea, architectural the 2900 had some issues but the refresh/redesign mix 3800 solved most of this though bad driver support by then also hampered the 2900, Crossfire was a bit so-so as well and the initial 3870X2 didn't do well as far as I know.
4000 series worked quite well though 4870 (4850 as well?) had problematic VRM's so overclocking or high load could potentially kill the card (Happened with my 4870X2) the 4890 apparently solves this (I use a Sapphire Vapor-X 2GB 4890 with third party design myself currently.)
NVIDIA 480 and 470 series also got some flak though they performed really well, 580 and 570 resolved this as far as I'm aware and also dominate in terms of performance.
I don't know much about ATI 5000 series but the 6000 series resolved some issues with performance under certain situations like heavy tesselation and it's clocked better though overall it's not always much faster than the 5800 series minus the enthusiast line up 6900 models.
(Marketing and brand name changes makes it a bit difficult to compare them but that goes for both NVIDIA and ATI such as certain lower-end NV200 models and the somewhat odd NV300 series of lower-end GPU's.)
I've had no real issues with Catalyst either with the software or games, functionality could be improved but it's slowly getting together and performance is looking better as well, and for the other computer (Using a NVIDIA GeForce 7800GTX 256MB) I have had no issues with Forceware either, currently using the latest beta (That supports that hardware natively so not the absolutely latest 260.xx serie, still holds up for work and older titles.)
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Werelds
Special Little Man
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Location: 0100111001001100
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| Posted: Wed, 5th Jan 2011 20:49 Post subject: |
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It's bullshit. That dates back like a decade, when ATI did in fact have terrible drivers.
Right now, there really is no advantage to either. From recent personal experience, the ATI drivers are a bit more stable, I haven't had it reset with my 5870 at least, while that has happened with my 460 (I rolled back a version and all was good). On the flip side, NVIDIA do have a slightly easier to use control panel.
The only advantage NVIDIA really has is their TWIMTBP title, with which they sometimes intentionally fuck ATI over, Batman: AA being the prime example. We can only hope they don't pull a similar stunt with Crysis 2. And before someone jumps in and whines about cheating from either side: that's my point exactly. Both sides have done it, do it, and will keep doing it. Period.
Both have also made serious driver fuckups with fans not spinning fast enough (or at all), causing VRMs and what not to overheat. When it comes to CFX and SLI, ATI have the upper hand right now with the 6-series - support for new games means you have to wait for a profile for both sides, but the 6-series scale incredibly well. The 5-series was also pretty good, but from what I hear the 4-series does have some pretty serious issues with CFX from time to time.
So no, their drivers are not worse. They're also not better. Anyone claiming otherwise better show me some proof that shows that statistically ATI has had more issues, because from personal experience, I don't see it, and that's coming from someone who has owned 2 ATI cards versus 6 or 7 NVIDIA cards in the past decade (before that I had my ATI Mach64 + Voodoo 1 and some Matrox/Cirrus crap  ), so I'm not exactly an ATI fanboy.
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| Posted: Thu, 6th Jan 2011 09:20 Post subject: |
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Whilst Nvidia drivers are also far from perfect, ATI do still produce terrible drivers. For example, the current 10.12 (preview, non-preview, hotfix) are causing BSOD for some 6xxx owners when their system enters sleep state. For cards costing £200-300, that's just unacceptable.
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Werelds
Special Little Man
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Location: 0100111001001100
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| Posted: Thu, 6th Jan 2011 09:54 Post subject: |
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| ManMountain wrote: | | Whilst Nvidia drivers are also far from perfect, ATI do still produce terrible drivers. For example, the current 10.12 (preview, non-preview, hotfix) are causing BSOD for some 6xxx owners when their system enters sleep state. For cards costing £200-300, that's just unacceptable. |
And NVIDIA's 196.75 was acceptable?
There's also a lot of people still on 197.xx, and a lot of people skipped 180.xx altogether because of BSODs. Like I've been saying for a while now, both sides have their issues. I personally had to skip 260.89, because it kept resetting, even when simply watching stuff on YouTube 
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Frant
King's Bounty
Posts: 24655
Location: Your Mom
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| Posted: Thu, 6th Jan 2011 11:17 Post subject: |
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| pwerelds wrote: | It's bullshit. That dates back like a decade, when ATI did in fact have terrible drivers.
...
So no, their drivers are not worse. They're also not better. Anyone claiming otherwise better show me some proof that shows that statistically ATI has had more issues, because from personal experience, I don't see it, and that's coming from someone who has owned 2 ATI cards versus 6 or 7 NVIDIA cards in the past decade (before that I had my ATI Mach64 + Voodoo 1 and some Matrox/Cirrus crap ), so I'm not exactly an ATI fanboy. |
+ eternity+1
I think it's simple name calling between the different camps' fan-boys.
And to debunk any idea that I'm an AMD/ATI fanboy:
Cirrus Logic 5430 512kb (2D only, no 3D)
Matrox Mystique 2Mb (2d/crappy 3d)
Voodoo2 12mb (3d only, connected to 2d-card with cable)
Voodoo3 3000 16mb AGP
Voodoo5 5500 64mb AGP
Kyro II 64mb AGP
Geforce4 Ti4200 AGP
ATI Radeon 9800SE
Geforce 6800GT AGP
Geforce 6800GS PCI-Express
ATI Radeon X1900XT(X)
Geforce 8800GT (awesome card)
ATI Radeon HD4870 PCS+ (it broke and I was sent the 4890 as a replacement)
ATI Radeon HD4890
ATI Radeon HD6950^70
Ph'nglui mglw'nafh Cthulhu R'lyeh wgah'nagl fhtagn!
"The sky was the color of a TV tuned to a dead station" - Neuromancer
Last edited by Frant on Tue, 18th Jan 2011 15:54; edited 1 time in total
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JBeckman
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Frant
King's Bounty
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Location: Your Mom
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| Posted: Tue, 18th Jan 2011 16:52 Post subject: |
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Meh...
| Quote: | | I came in this morning and it seems as though our Driver Team had a few more last minute tweaks/changes which in turn delays the process for certification and testing and now the new date is firm for next week. The driver is a “release candidate” and we’re currently working on WHQL certification, the Driver Team is keeping me informed as to when it’ll go live. I’ve now been told that they’re working on a timeline to have it out by mid-next week, so most definitely either Wednesday 25th or Thursday 26th . |
Ph'nglui mglw'nafh Cthulhu R'lyeh wgah'nagl fhtagn!
"The sky was the color of a TV tuned to a dead station" - Neuromancer
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JBeckman
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| Posted: Tue, 18th Jan 2011 17:14 Post subject: |
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That's the WHQL itself isn't it?
(Thus not applicable to any "hotfix" or beta release.)
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Frant
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| Posted: Tue, 18th Jan 2011 17:18 Post subject: |
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I sure hope so. Flashing 11.1a in front of you (the first proper 6900-series driver) and then pulling it away into next week is cruel.
http://legitreviews.com/news/9872/
| Quote: | AMD Catalyst 11.1a Hot-Fix Drivers Delayed - Now Coming Jan 25th or 26th
Last night I posted that AMD would be releasing Catalyst 11.1a Hot-Fix drivers and it appears that overnight the AMD driver team found some last minute changes that needed to be made and has held the driver release. The driver is now looking like it will be released on Wednesday the 25th or Thursday the 26th if all goes well. It also looks like this driver is waiting to get WHQL certification as well, so that might be part of the delay. It looks like the press will have access to this driver though as this performance jump is rumored to be needed to compete with the NVIDIA GeForce GTX 560 video card that is coming out next week. It should be interesting to see what driver all the review sites use as you can see from our post last night that the benchmark improvements are rather significant in some games and synthetic benchmarks. |
Since the press have the non-WHQL beta/RC we can always hope it will leak at any moment.
Ph'nglui mglw'nafh Cthulhu R'lyeh wgah'nagl fhtagn!
"The sky was the color of a TV tuned to a dead station" - Neuromancer
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JBeckman
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| Posted: Tue, 18th Jan 2011 17:29 Post subject: |
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Seems I was wrong then and it is the 1.11a is indeed delayed, unfortunate.
A leak would be interesting if it happened, some nice performance fixes and corrections even though main focus is on the newest card series and specifically tesselation control for ATI 6800 and 6900 series though rather rough due to lack of profiles.
(Though that's why they call it hotfix though the term beta would be better fitting.)
(Many undocumented fixes also likely make their way into this driver since it is a 11.1 build and more recent likely seeing WHQL certification times so 11.1 itself is likely dated December 20th - 30th some time or just at the start of January.)
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Frant
King's Bounty
Posts: 24655
Location: Your Mom
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| Posted: Tue, 18th Jan 2011 23:09 Post subject: |
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| JBeckman wrote: | Seems I was wrong then and it is the 1.11a is indeed delayed, unfortunate.
A leak would be interesting if it happened, some nice performance fixes and corrections even though main focus is on the newest card series and specifically tesselation control for ATI 6800 and 6900 series though rather rough due to lack of profiles.
(Though that's why they call it hotfix though the term beta would be better fitting.)
(Many undocumented fixes also likely make their way into this driver since it is a 11.1 build and more recent likely seeing WHQL certification times so 11.1 itself is likely dated December 20th - 30th some time or just at the start of January.) |
http://www.nfohump.com/forum/viewtopic.php?p=1398583#1398583
Ph'nglui mglw'nafh Cthulhu R'lyeh wgah'nagl fhtagn!
"The sky was the color of a TV tuned to a dead station" - Neuromancer
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